Super Bowl just like kid’s play

All season long, Los Angeles Rams safety Eric Weddle roused his team with the same pep talk.

Eric Weddle of the Los Angeles Rams during practice in preparation for Super Bowl LVI. Picture: Getty Images.

All season long, Los Angeles Rams safety Eric Weddle roused his team with the same pep talk.

“I just want you guys to know: I’ve played 25 straight years of tackle football, and I never once won a championship,” he would say.

Weddle looked at the players around him and figured this was the year that would change. They were talented and dedicated enough to win it all. They were flawlessly executing the most complicated schemes in football. They were capable of blowing the doors off their opponents.

They were also 12 years old.

Weddle’s last several months have been a delirious fairy tale. He was retired from the NFL, content and coaching his son on a San Diego-area Pop Warner (youth football) team. Then, after being out of the league for two seasons, he got a call from the Rams just before the playoffs asking if he could step in after they suffered a string of injuries.

Weddle and the Rams will play the Cincinnati Bengals in the Super Bowl (Monday morning, AEDT), and it’s now an opportunity for Weddle to win what would be his second championship. He already won one coaching his son and the Rancho Bernardo Broncos.

“I literally cannot wait to get with my assistant coaches and plan for next season as soon as this crazy run is over with,” Weddle says.

After a storied career with the Chargers, Ravens and Rams that included six Pro Bowls and being named to the Pro Football Hall of Fame 2010s All-Decade Team, Weddle called it quits after the 2019 season. When Covid shut things down in California in 2020, the Weddles bolted to Utah and his son played on a team out there. At first, he just sat back and played the role of Dad from the sidelines. Midway through that season, he began helping the coaching staff.

Having returned to San Diego in 2021, Weddle had an itch. He wanted to coach his own team. He reached out to Pop Warner, the national youth football organisation, and asked if he could apply for any open coaching spots nearby. The vetting process didn’t last very long.

“What’s your name?” “Eric Weddle.” “You don’t need to interview.” Weddle was placed in charge of the 12-and-under Rancho Bernardo Broncos. Most of them had never played tackle football before. Some signed up just for the opportunity to play for him. Others hadn’t even heard of the man who once spent nine years starring in the city for the then-San Diego Chargers.

“I didn’t even know he was an NFL player before he became my coach,” says Drew Coats, one of the team’s linebackers. “So it was pretty cool to find out.” Weddle admits that he was nervous to deal with his new players, but he ploughed through his jitters about coaching a group of 35 inexperienced pre-teens with a counterintuitive plan. He implemented the same complicated schemes he played in during his time in the NFL.

Scott Coats remembers just how crazy that sounded. Drew’s father and a former high-school football coach, he signed up as one of the Broncos’ assistant coaches. When he met with Weddle for the first time, they discussed their goals for the upcoming season and what offences and defences Weddle planned to run.

“I was like, ‘Whoa. This guy has got some real lofty expectations,’” Scott Coats says. “If I’m being honest, I was a little sceptical that our kids, like my son – who had never played before – could do the things that he set out for us to accomplish.” There were more than 200 plays in their playbook, and on defence they used a 3-4 front that relied on pressure. A lot. Weddle says they blitzed about 85 per cent of the time. It looked just like the system Weddle played in back when he was with the Ravens.

The Broncos, not to be confused with the NFL team of the same name, also mixed a spread offence with a physical running attack while sprinkling in options and the zone-reads that have become so popular at the highest level of the sport in recent years.

After Weddle taught the team a playbook the length of a seventh-grade algebra textbook, the parents and assistant coaches who were unsure noticed something surprising.

“We all short-changed them,” says Gary Sartain, a team parent and assistant coach, adding: “12-year-olds picked it up faster than some of the coaches did.”

“I definitely did learn a lot,” Bennett Sartain, his son and Broncos defensive lineman says.

Weddle called the plays on both sides of the ball, and he had a player he could trust to execute his game plan. The same player starred at both quarterback and safety. It was a kid named Gaige Weddle.

As a quarterback, Gaige Weddle was the Lamar Jackson of the 12U Pop Warner West Coast Conference. He ran the ball 68 times for 850 yards and 13 touchdowns. He threw for 1481 yards and 26 touchdowns, with just three interceptions, while completing 97 of 123 – or 78.9 per cent – of his passes.

As a safety, Gaige Weddle also resembles a certain NFL player. He moves fluidly. He also loves to hit.

“I guess he gets that from his dad,” Eric Weddle says. “He’s a better defensive player than I was at his age.”

There were two groups of people who still suspected this retired-player-turned-coach had the juice to unretire.

The first was the Broncos.

They saw how he still took meticulous care of his body. They watched with amazement at his athleticism when he would play the scout team quarterback to simulate opposing teams that had a running quarterback.

They bantered that at some point it was inevitable that Weddle would get a phone call.

“I’m not surprised,” Sartain says.

The other people who believed it was plausible were the ones who gave him that phone call.

The Rams suffered a number of injuries at safety at the end of the season, and they began to wonder if their best option was someone who hadn’t played since 2019. That’s when defensive co-ordinator Raheem Morris buzzed Weddle and cut to the chase.

“You’re not fat and out of shape, are you?” Morris asked.

He wasn’t. After Weddle didn’t play in a single regular-season game, or play at all last year, the Rams signed him just before their first playoff game.

He played 34 per cent of the team’s defensive snaps in the opening-round win against the Arizona Cardinals.

That skyrocketed to 85 per cent against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. By the time the Rams beat the 49ers in the NFC Championship, Weddle had played every single defensive snap – and led the team in tackles.

“I’m really happy for him that he finally gets a chance to achieve his dream,” 12-year-old Bennett Sartain says.

But Weddle already achieved that dream back in November. By the time the season was over, the Rancho Bernardo Broncos were 11-1. They won the title game against the Carlsbad Fighting Lancers 44-15. Eric Weddle finally had his first championship.

The Super Bowl would just be his second.

“It’s good to have a chance to win two championships in one year,” Weddle says. “Life is good.”

Wall Street Journal